Online sites like Pinterest shape what home buyers want — and builders are listening

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Larry McCormack, lmccormack@tennessean.com

Trends indicate that home buyers are less interested in formal dining rooms and want more functional eating areas like this multipurpose space in a new home in Westhaven.(Photo11: Courtesy of Southern Land Company)

Story Highlights

If you have ever pinned a photo of your dream kitchen or master bathroom, you're not alone.

“Sites like Pinterest and Houzz have really opened up the information that buyers have," said Michelle Chapman of Southern Land Company.

Having actual images helps builders visualize what buyers want — and make it a reality.

"It also helps us to identify trends and update our offerings,” Chapman said

If you have ever pinned a photo of your dream kitchen or master bathroom from Pinterest, or taken a screen shot of a front elevation you love on Houzz.com, you might actually be able to bring these ideas off your computer screen and into reality.

The home building and architecture teams at Franklin-based Southern Land Company, for example, not only notice trends that new home buyers are bringing to the table, they are listening — and taking action.

Show and tell

“A lot of inspiration comes from the connectivity we have online now where people can share trends,” said Michelle Chapman, Southern Land Company’s director of single-family architecture. “Sites like Pinterest and Houzz have really opened up the information that buyers have, and they are able to bring imagery of what they want. It also helps us to identify trends and update our offerings.”

Which is exactly what the home building team is doing with its newest plans in the Westhaven community. Dan Gilbert, vice president of homebuilding for Southern Land Company Homebuilding, LLC, said some recent architectural changes within the company have included modifying plans to accommodate three-car garages, designing rooms with multiple uses, rethinking the dining room space and bringing a fresh perspective to outdoor spaces.

“Before, you would have a separate outdoor space. Each home had its own courtyard,” Gilbert said. “Now we are trying to make it a continuous extension of the family room or kitchen because people nowadays entertain a lot more, so making the most of this entertainment space has been very popular.”

This home in the Westhaven community is Southern Land Homebuilding’s take on the popular white farmhouse trend with unique touches such as the brick foundation and colored front door.(Photo11: Courtesy of Southern Land Company)

Plans evolve

The very first home plan for Westhaven was drawn in 2002 and although it was up-to-date for that time, trends have changed since then and SLC’s architecture team knows they can’t continue to build the same houses they built 15 years ago.

Gilbert and Chapman say they pay very close attention to what home buyers are asking for and make every effort to work those trends into existing floor plans. In some cases, they start from scratch with a brand new design — all based on customer feedback.

“We are always looking to improve the product we’ve already built,” Gilbert said. “We’ve had some plans where Michelle has just moved a couple of rooms or pushed a wall here or there and it has allowed us to get a better program for that price point. Then, we’ve also completely started from scratch to try to think outside the box. If we are starting over with a particular footprint, we want to think about what we can add that we don’t already have.”

Southern Land Company architects are listening to requests of homebuyers and adding features to their homes such as additional natural light as shown in this bathroom.(Photo11: Courtesy of Southern Land Company)

What's trending

One trend Chapman said has caught their attention lately is the reinvention of the laundry room. No longer is it the one room in the house that is always closed off because it’s a holding pattern for piles of dirty (and sometimes clean) clothes.

“The laundry room has become the home center,” she said. “It’s turning into a bigger room with multiple purposes. Room for folding and hanging clothes, but also room for a second refrigerator or even a small home office. We are focusing on expanding that room and adding natural light as much as we can.”

Another trend Chapman is loving right now is the free-standing bathtub when there’s room to add that as an upgraded feature. Also, private bathrooms adjacent to upstairs bedrooms instead of the once-popular Jack-and-Jill-style shared bathroom spaces are another change being implemented.

Home design now, she said, is a completely different ballgame as far as what buyers want.

“We can pull up a house plan we did eight, or even six years ago, and I wouldn’t design that house the same way today. I would open the layout and get rid of the rooms we no longer need.”